Wong moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and got her start at the age of 20 singing in the Canto-Pop genre when she signed with Cinepoly Records and recorded her debut album Shirley Wong (1989). A stay in New York City in the early 1990s led Wong to experiment with her musical style, evidenced by 1992's Coming Home and subsequent albums such as Restless (1996), a change that has affected the genre as a whole. Wong has sold over 7 million records worldwide and made her acting debut in Chungking Express (1994).